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On a crisp, sunny March afternoon, Arthur Laurents welcomed me into his handsome townhouse in Greenwich Village, his home for 51 years, which he had filled with tasteful furnishings, antiques and fine artwork. He agreed to the in-person interview to talk about the touring production of his Broadway revival of "West Side Story," which opens Tuesday, May 24, at Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts. The show hardly needed promoting, but I jumped at the chance to talk to the writer-director who at 93 was a theatrical legend, for his scripts for "West Side Story" and "Gypsy" and his direction of their acclaimed revivals. He was also the screenwriter for...

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On a crisp, sunny March afternoon, Arthur Laurents welcomed me into his handsome townhouse in Greenwich Village, his home for 51 years, which he had filled with tasteful furnishings, antiques and fine artwork.
He agreed to the in-person interview to talk...

Lyricist, singer and songwriter Johnny Mercer will receive a tribute in song next week at the Cabaret & Performance Conference at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Centerin Waterford.“AC-CENT-TCHU-ATE THE POSITIVE”, A Johnny Mercer Celebration," created...

David Hyde Pierce says there wasn't a "Eureka!" moment when it occurred to him to set Oscar Wilde's classic comedy of manners in manors, "The Importance of Being Earnest" with the playwright's characters as transplanted American...

The Illinois Film Office has a new director. Gov. Bruce Rauner has appointed GOP political consultant Christine Dudley, who steps into a job that primarily focuses on luring TV and film projects to Illinois.
Dudley takes over for Betsy Steinberg, who ran...

So anyway the Governors Ball is first on the party circuit because it’s right upstairs from the Dolby Theatre, where the Oscars take place.
I was late-ish getting there because I was waiting for the winners to finish making their rounds in the...

Electrical cords dangled from the ceiling. Tables were stacked against walls, rigging hardware strewn about. Ladders, lots of them, were being climbed by crew members with loud power tools.
Roughly 72 hours before Jennifer Aniston, George Clooney,...

As the film business gears up to honor the best films of the year at the Academy Awards, the worst are getting recognized, too. The shortlist for the Razzies, which names the worst films of the year, has been obtained by awards site Gold Derby, listing...

There's enough story presented in Wednesday's first episode of "Empire," the new Fox melodrama about a New York City family feuding over control of its record label, to sustain several TV seasons.
A long run would be a good thing for the show's...

Conservatives branded it an assault on family values. The nation's drug czar warned recovering addicts not to watch it. Schools barred clothing featuring its images.
But when "The Simpsons" premieres its 26th season Sunday, TV's longest-running...

APRIL 30
The M Word
At a struggling Los Angeles TV station, a children's show actress leads her female colleagues as new management arrives from New York on a cost-cutting mission. With Tanna Frederick, Michael Imperioli and Gregory Harrison. Written...

The final shoe has yet to drop for "Sex and the City's" Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda, according to the franchise's star, Sarah Jessica Parker.
But that doesn't necessarily mean a third "Sex and the City" film based on the...

"Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return" is a harmless but almost charmless adaptation of a book by L. Frank Baum's grandson. It's a derivative hash of grandpa's story, set in the present day, given forgettable new tunes by pop songsmiths such as Bryan...

After nearly three hours in the crucible that is "Transformers: Age of Extinction," a sort of shorthand might be helpful to discuss the fourth edition of the ginormous action franchise ruled by the iron fist of director Michael Bay.
To that...

"SOMETIMES people write novels and they just be so wordy and so self-absorbed. ... I am a proud non-reader of books," said tycoon Kanye West.
He's the man who tried to wrest Taylor Swift's MTV Video Award out of her winning hands. He also...

Actor Ryan Phillippe has sold his home in Hollywood Hills West for $6 million.
With a master suite that takes up an entire level, the gated five-bedroom, 6.5-bathroom house contains 7,600 square feet of living space. Among its features are a gym, a media...

The price Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne got for their Hidden Hills estate has finally made its way into the public record. The couple sold for $11.5 million.
The Cape Cod-inspired mansion, built in 2001, sits on a 2.5-acre promontory off a cul-de-sac in the...

The play is more than 400 years old and we all know how it ends, but suddenly William Shakespeare's "Macbeth" is back in vogue.
The Scottish tragedy is enticing a number of actors ranging from young to the far side of middle age to play the...

Whatever the 100 or so extras were frantically running away from during “Transformers 4” filming Sunday at Cloud Gate (better known as The Bean) in Millennium Park, Kelsey Grammer, who plays a villain in the film, was nonchalantly walking toward it....

"The Simpsons" may be going strong in its 25th season, but a major character from the long-running animated series will soon meet his or her maker.
In a conference call with reporters last week, executive producer Al Jean revealed plans to kill...